Search

This article reads Mark’s tale of the Gerasene demoniac as a narrative explication of the parables in the preceding chapter—particularly the mustard seed—in which the kingdom of God is described in light of the paradigmatic kingdom of the period, imperial Rome. The account portrays the violent destruction of Rome, achieved through synecdoche by the annihilation of an occupying ‘Legion’, as well as the peaceful infiltration of a new kingdom, achieved through mimesis in the second scene by the demoniac’s ‘invasion’ of a hostile crowd. In so doing, the passage both mimics and subverts standard ancient ideologies of kingdom and invasion.

It is not uncommon to read studies that either state explicitly or work under the assumption that the synoptic problem has been solved. Using the parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven as a test-case, it becomes clear that the problem is far from a solution. Each of the three major source hypotheses has its strengths (and weaknesses) when it attempts to account for the data generated by these two peri copae. Although this paper concludes that the Two-Document Hypothesis (2DH) deals with the data with the fewest problems, the strengths of the other hypotheses coupled with the weaknesses of the 2DH should help keep the 2DH honest.